What is a good typing speed? Average WPM, from 168,000 typists
The best data on everyday typing speed comes from a 2018 study in which 168,960 people each typed 15 sentences in their browser (Dhakal et al., 2018). Here is what it found, and how to read your own number.
The average is about 52 words per minute
Across all volunteers, the mean speed was 51.6 wpm, with a standard deviation of 20.2 wpm (Dhakal et al., 2018). In plain terms: most people type somewhere between about 30 and 70 wpm, and anything above about 78 wpm puts you in the fastest 10% of that group.
The volunteers chose to take an online typing test, so they may be a bit faster than the population as a whole. Treat these as rough guides, not official grades.
A rough guide
- Below 30 wpm: slower than most people who type every day. Reducing mistakes and not looking at the keys usually helps most.
- 30 to 70 wpm: the normal range for everyday typists.
- Around 52 wpm: about the average in the study.
- Above about 78 wpm: the fastest 10% of the study's volunteers.
Accuracy is part of a good speed
On average, typists left 1.17% of characters wrong and made corrections on 6.3% of their keystrokes (Dhakal et al., 2018). Fast typists made fewer errors, so speed and accuracy go together across people. A good typing speed is one you can hold with few corrections.
What fast typists do differently
- They overlap keystrokes, pressing the next key before releasing the last one, on 40 to 70% of keys (Dhakal et al., 2018).
- They make fewer substitution errors (wrong key in place of the right one) (Dhakal et al., 2018).
- They look at the keyboard less and use more fingers, consistently (Pinet et al., 2022; Feit et al., 2016).
Why one test can mislead you
Your speed depends on the text. Common letter pairs are typed faster than rare ones, and fast typists are especially tuned to common sequences (Behmer & Crump, 2017). A short test with easy words can give a much higher number than a long one with harder words, and any single run varies by a few wpm by chance.
To know whether you are really getting faster, compare runs on text of the same difficulty and look at the typical result over several runs, not your best one. Boost Type's weekly benchmark does exactly that.
Find your own weak spots
Boost Type records which keys, letter pairs and habits cost you the most time, then builds short practice around them. Three tests is enough to start.
Questions
What is the average typing speed?
About 52 wpm. In a study of 168,960 typists, the mean was 51.6 wpm with a standard deviation of about 20 wpm.
Is 60 wpm a good typing speed?
Yes. 60 wpm is above the average of about 52 wpm in the largest study of typing so far.
What typing speed is in the top 10%?
In that study, the fastest 10% of typists were above about 78 wpm.
Why is my speed different on every test?
Text difficulty and normal day-to-day variation both move your result. Compare several runs on similar text rather than one personal best.
Sources
- Dhakal, V., Feit, A. M., Kristensson, P. O., & Oulasvirta, A. (2018). Observations on typing from 136 million keystrokes. CHI '18. doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174220
- Pinet, S., Zielinski, C., Alario, F.-X., & Longcamp, M. (2022). Typing expertise in a large student population. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 7, 77. doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00424-3
- Feit, A. M., Weir, D., & Oulasvirta, A. (2016). How we type: Movement strategies and performance in everyday typing. CHI '16, 4262-4273. doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858233
- Behmer, L. P., Jr., & Crump, M. J. C. (2017). Crunching big data with fingertips: How typists tune their performance toward the statistics of natural language. In Big Data in Cognitive Science (pp. 319-341). Routledge. www.crumplab.com/publications/Crump/files/4991/Behmer%20and%20Crump%20-%202017%20-%20Crunching%20big%20data%20with%20finger%20tips%20How%20typists%20t.pdf